Fear and Ferguson

Many, many years from now, toward the end of this century, three days will slip quietly past on the calendar. They will be the days that Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and Renisha McBride might have died. After all, they were citizens of a country where most people live to be old. They weren't meant to die before age 20.

They weren't meant to die of other people's fear.

We need to talk about the fear that killed them.

We need to talk about it so we can stop nurturing it.

Each of these young Americans was shot and killed by an adult who had bought into a narrative that says that black teenagers are dangerous. Each of these teenagers was deemed a threat by an armed adult despite being unarmed themselves. We haven't heard from the killer of Michael Brown yet, but when and if we do, I won't be surprised if we hear, in one form or another, that he was scared. It's what we heard from the killers of Renisha McBride and Trayvon Martin. In one case, a jury rejected this nonsense. In another, it apparently found it plausible.

Why?

Because nearly everything in our popular culture and nearly everything in our news media presents African-Americans as "scary." And when one person or a small number of people are doing something out-of-line, if they're white it's spoken of as the act of individuals but if they're black it's often widely perceived and tacitly presented as an example of what "they" do. There's been a lot of this dichotomy in the discussion of what's going on in Ferguson.

For example, take a look at this brief and understated article in the Washington Post. Notice how the neighbors seem afraid of "thugs" (their word, not mine) invading their neighborhood, but absolutely unafraid of ...well, their own neighbor. The guy that shot Michael Brown. Six times.

Look at the news. Notice how those in authority, bizarrely, have focused on the people of Ferguson as if they were a problem to be solved, rather than focusing on-- or, at least, publicly saying anything about-- the investigation into the death of Michael Brown.

And, of course, in this case as in the others, there's been the business of pointing out flaws in the victim... in comparison, I suppose, to the stellar perfection of all other teenagers.

And the showering of the perpetrator with monetary gifts.

All of these are different expressions of fear, a societal fear that is killing black teenagers.

We bookish people tend to feel that the answer to this problem lies in better books, but we're only partly right. Books are such a small portion of the cultural message that most people consume. The answer lies in insisting on more sensitive, nuanced discussion across all media. The news media needs to talk about racism as if we were grownups. It needs to use the same language to talk about the actions of black people as it uses to talk about those of white people. (I could say a lot more about this!) Television and movies need to stop using blackness as a visual code for badness.

Some years ago I had a curious conversation in a remote village on the Bering Sea coast. I was in the office I shared with another teacher, a local woman. I forget what we were talking about, but she made the surprising remark that she had never met a black person.

"And I'm worried that when I do, I might react wrongly," she said. "I might act as though I expect them to be violent and angry. Because that's what I always see on tv. And I know they probably aren't really like that."

Unfortunately, not everyone is as willing to deconstruct the media message as my friend was. Many people don't demand this level of thinking from themselves. So we need to change the message.

This problem can be solved. This is America, and we've solved lots of problems. Many things that were commonplace a generation ago are unthinkable now. We can make this lethal fear of black teenagers unthinkable, as well. 

 

We can insist that our media and popular culture stop feeding it.

Let's do it now. Lives depend on it.

The Rule of Law

It's five days since a Ferguson, Missouri police officer shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown, and we don't know who that officer was. This is pretty strange in the information age. Usually, when someone stands accused of killing someone, we know their name. In fact, usually the police are the ones to reveal it.

Now in this case we don't have a name, apparently because of concerns about repercussions against the officer and his family. That almost sounds logical till you poke at it a little.

We live in a society that enjoys the Rule of Law. And the essence of the Rule of Law is that it prevents repercussions by ensuring justice. It's safe to name the accused in our society because instead of an ancient system of blood feud, we have criminal charges and courts and juries.

The Rule of Law, like magic, only works if we believe in it. And thus far events in Missouri have given us very little reason to believe in it. By not revealing the name of the accused, the authorities in Ferguson, Missouri are giving us a strong indication that they don't believe in it.

A police force that doesn't believe in the Rule of Law is a frightening thing. It's a police force that might do anything.

In fact, it's a police force that already has. Last Saturday.

Middle Grade: Time to Lose the C-word

In the past two months, I've been blasted out of five (5) recent children's books by the C-word.

There I was, reading along, having a grand time, when all of a sudden...BAM. C-word. I'm knocked out of the story and cast adrift, the words on the page sifting meaninglessly past a brain now completely preoccupied with wondering why the author –with whom I'd been getting along swimmingly up till then-- suddenly decided to descend into hate speech.

But don't picture me reading these books. Picture a child in a wheelchair. A little boy with a leg-brace. A girl on crutches. Picture them reading the books. All of a sudden they're smacked right in the eyes with a line something like this:

He was a cripple.

I hadn't known she was crippled.

Why would anyone hurt a cripple?

Why indeed? But the child reader has been called this name on the school playground. And yes, of course it hurt.

(By the way, the above-- and below-- are not direct quotes from the books. I'm not naming and shaming. Just hoping for change.)

Does it matter how the word is presented? Whether it's in quotes or not? Marginally. Only marginally. Remember, the target readers are children, with a child's level of discernment.

Anyway, in four of the five books, the word occurred at least once without quotes.

In two of them, it was used in the authorial voice to describe a person with a physical disability.

In two, it was used to describe hypothetical people, "cripples" in the abstract.

In three, it was used as a figure of speech.

A crippling blow.

The ship was crippled.

(If you're thinking that adds up to seven: Yeah. Three of the five books used the word repeatedly.)

I think most people would probably be okay with the figurative use. I'm not. For those people to whom a word has fangs, it has fangs even when it's used figuratively. If you think about other hate speech in this context, you'll see what I mean.

It would also probably be okay with most people (including me) if the word was discussed, if the fact that it's hateful and hurtful, and/or how a character is affected by the word, was the author's point.

It's never discussed.

We didn't use the C-word for years, because we understood that it was insulting and hateful. Now apparently we think it's edgy.

The C-word, by the way, does not have fangs for all people with mobility-related disabilities. Those who react most negatively to it, I think, are those who were already physically disabled in elementary school.

But these are middle grade books. They're for people in elementary school.

So please, can we stop calling them names?





 
update 8/12/14: Two days later...now I've read the word in six (6) recent middle grade books.

How to Get An Agent (or anyway, how to look for one without going nuts)

So how do you go about getting a literary agent?

Well, the first step is to write an excellent manuscript, of course. But let's assume you've already done that.

Here's my recipe, based on experience gathered over the course of several agent hunts.

1. Define what you're looking for

This is really important! Don't tell yourself that “any agent will do.” It's not true. An agent will end up having the final say in whether and where you submit your work. You want to find someone you can trust with that decision.

Make a list of the qualifications you're looking for in an agent. Here's what my list eventually became:

• Agent has a good sales record with middle grade fantasy
• Agent has been an editor at a major publisher
• Agent works in New York City
• Agent does not have a significant online presence

There are, of course, many excellent agents who don't meet these qualifications. You'll want to make your own list of what you feel comfortable with. I just offer mine as an example.

2. Make a list of agents

You'll find agents listed on agentquery.com and querytracker.net. Search for agents who represent your genre. The information on these sites may be outdated, so double-check everything. Make a list of every agent who reps your genre.

3. Annotate your list

Check your list of agents (step 2 above) against your list of qualifications you want in an agent (step 1 above). Google each agent on your list. Look for interviews and reported sales. Be sure to read the agent's webpage if s/he's got one. Take copious notes. The purpose of this is not to find connections you can mention in your query, but to help you make the right choice.

That's right. You're choosing them. They make a choice too, of course. But it's important to give full, non-starstruck attention to your own part in the choosing.

4. Divide your list

Now it's time to select the agents you feel you'd like to work with. Divide your now-annotated list into three categories:

♫ = I should be so lucky.

♪ = S/he would do nicely.

X = Alas, I fear we should not suit.

For the ♫ and X agents, make a note of why you put them in that category.

In my case, the ♫ agents were those who met all four of my desired qualifications. (Note that I don't call them “dream agents”. All I knew about them was what I'd found online... insufficient data for dreaming.) The ♪ agents met two or three of the qualifications. The X agents in most cases had no reported sales.

Take the X agents off the list and put them in a separate file. Later you may wonder why you didn't query them, so this will serve as a reminder.

5. Write your query

There are plenty of sites with good advice on how to do this, and alas, some sites with not-so-good advice. Janet Reid's Query Shark blog offers good advice, as does Absolute Write.

Polish your query to the nines. But not to the tens. Spend a couple weeks on it, but not three years. Ultimately, it's only a query.

6. Send your query

If this is your first time querying, or if you've never gotten a request in the past, pick just six agents off your list to query. If you know the ropes pretty well, pick ten. Check each agent's submission guidelines and tailor the query to the agent. Hit “send.” Note the date you sent the query in your records.

Bite your nails. Try to think about something else. Give it a month.

Increasingly, agents have a “no response means no” policy. There's not much we can do about this. Back in the day, you could avoid querying such agents, but that's probably no longer possible... there are too many of them.

Keep careful records of any replies you received, including dates of form receipts or form rejections.

At the end of the month, if you've heard nothing, don't nudge. Instead, get ready to send your next batch.

7. Send your next batch.

If all you got were form rejections or no response, there are two possibilities:

1. There's something wrong with your query.
2. You've written something that the agents (or their interns) don't think is marketable. A common reason for this is that a trend has suddenly become a glut.

Hard to tell which. But take another look at your query anyway, revise if necessary, and go on to the next six (or ten) agents.

By the way, I'd divide these batches between your ♫ and ♪ agents. You don't want to use up your whole ♫ list while you're still refining your query.

8. Reacting to requests

At some point, if you've gotten your query right and if you haven't written something for which there's no market, you will get a real live personal response.

If it's a rejection, read it over carefully. Wait 24 hours and read it again. Save it. If it's a partial or full request, make sure you have your manuscript ready to go. If that gets a rejection that's not a form rejection... same thing. Read the rejection carefully. Wait 24 hours and read it again. Save it. This is valuable data, especially if a consensus develops among several agents.

Never, ever say anything in response to a non-form rejection except, possibly, “thank you.”

9. The Offer of Representation

An offer of representation does not come via email. What comes via email is an invitation to talk on the phone. You may want to have a list of questions ready. (“What changes do you think my manuscript needs?” and “Where do you think you would submit it?” are two I would ask.) However, these conversations often seem to center on favorite books-- yours, his/hers. It's really a get-to-know you conversation.

After some talk in which you get to know each other, the agent will usually offer representation.

What should you do?

Now here's my advice, which differs from that of others:

Accept.

If the conversation went well, that is, and if you have the impression that this is someone you would like to work with. Just accept.

Especially if s/he's one of your ♫ agents.

Contact the agent's references, sure. But you don't need to contact other agents so that they can move your query to the top of their pile and consider whether they want to make an offer. You don't need multiple offers, since the terms are the same industrywide (the agent gets 15% of your domestic sales, 20% of foreign). You just need one good agent.

If the offer is from one of your ♪ agents, and one of your ♫ agents is also considering the manuscript, you might want to contact the latter to see if s/he's interested. On the other hand, you're already talking to someone who's enthusiastic enough about your manuscript that s/he read it quickly and responded quickly. It's up to you.

But you want to write, not to spend your whole life looking for an agent.

Walter Dean Myers and the World We've Lost

Walter Dean Myers died today. With this sudden loss, his much-read New York Times opinion piece from this past March takes on the character of a final charge to the kidlit community. One I hope we will fulfill.

What I thought when I first read the piece (from a perspective, of course, that began some 30 years after that of Mr. Myers) was this:

It wasn't always like this.

Here's a book from my shelves. If memory serves (it occasionally does) my brother bought it for the cover price of 1.50 at The Book Worm, a shop around 15 miles from our home. We bought books there sometimes, when we were in funds-- books by Walter Dean Myers, and S.E. Hinton, and John D. Fitzgerald, and Mildred Taylor. The books were all, like this one, modest in size and presentation. The Potterquake was still far in the future, and the children's book market wasn't anywhere near as competitive as it is now.

Hold onto that last thought. It's important.

In this long ago world, computers were vast objects that filled an entire room, and nothing went "beep" except automobile horns. Local volunteer firemen used to take all us village kids on long, long night rides atop the fire trucks and we were allowed to put out the streetlamps with the searchlights. Kids roamed freely in the fields and forests; no one expected anyone so patently annoying as us to be kidnapped.

The kids in Walter Dean Myers's books explored just like us, only in Harlem. That interested us. We climbed about in barns; Myers's characters roamed abandoned buildings. We rode our bikes down the steepest hills we could find; Myers's characters did wheelies. Harlem was a different world-- but these characters were fully relatable.

It had clearly never occurred to anybody at The Book Worm that the kids in a nearly all-white community wouldn't want to read books about kids in Harlem. As you can tell from the cover, it also hadn't occurred to anyone at Avon Books that since the majority of American children were white, black children ought to be kept off book covers. There can certainly have been no idea that the books were somehow Special Interest, rather than mainstream. The Book Worm was about the size of the average motel room, with no shelf space for Special Interest.

In his New York Times piece this past March, Myers wrote:

"...This was exactly what I wanted to do when I wrote about poor inner-city children — to make them human in the eyes of readers and, especially, in their own eyes. I need to make them feel as if they are part of America’s dream, that all the rhetoric is meant for them, and that they are wanted in this country."

I can only speak to the first part of Myers's wish. Mission accomplished. We ate these books with a spoon. Any suggestion that we shouldn't, or wouldn't, or couldn't have done so would have had to come to us from adults. No adults obliged.

We grew up. The Myers books got tucked onto a shelf with many others. The Potterquake came along and shook the children's book world to its core. And the annual output of children's books tripled.

The number of children, however, did not.

Suddenly the children's book world got more competitive. It became necessary to find an edge wherever one could. Covers became a matter of intense study and scrutiny-- what would attract readers? What would repel them?

At some point, someone somewhere seems to have decided, based on who knows what data or theory or madness, that a protagonist of color on the cover would not attract readers. (Begging the question: Which readers?)

There followed a period of several years during which African-American characters-- and, to a lesser extent, other characters of color-- vanished from the covers of children's books. Books that had a protagonist of color would show something non-human on the cover-- a symbol, a building, a monster, anything! Or the protagonist would appear in silhouette. Or, in what quickly came to be known as whitewashing, the protagonist would be shown on the cover but would have mysteriously lost melanin.

I see signs that this is dying out. I still think we have a long way to go before we progress to the point we were at in 1977. But I think that we've passed our nadir, and we're on an upward climb. Characters of color are reappearing on book covers, and some of them are even African-American.

We can do better, though. We can do so much better.

Let's do it for Walter Dean Myers.

Recipe: Spiedies

Friends, I am about to do what no upstate New Yorker does lightly. I am about to share my spiedies recipe.

Understand, this isn't my actual spiedies recipe. This is an approximation of how I make 'em, jotted down for the first time ever during a recent spiedies-making episode.

The main principles which my method follows are... wait, what?

What are spiedies?

Oh. Spiedies (pronounced "speedies") are a regional dish found within roughly 60 miles of Binghamton, New York. They are chunks of spiced, marinated meat, eaten in a sandwich. When I was a kid I thought they were called "spiedies" because they cook very quickly. Now that I am grown up and have Google, I'm able to find out that nobody knows why they're called spiedies. When I was a kid they were almost always made with beef. Nowadays I think they are more often made with chicken.

Anyway, spiedies are not good for you, but I like to think my version is less-not-good-for-you than others.

Warning: Spiedies are addictive.

Ingredients:

2 large garlic cloves

1 lb (450 grams) organic free-range boneless, skinless chicken breast

1/2 cup olive oil (Metric conversion table for recipes)

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

1/4 tsp lime juice

1/4 tsp turmeric

pinch fresh ground black pepper

1/8 tsp Jane's Crazy Mixed-Up Salt (optional)

1 T¹ fresh basil (about 8 leaves)

1 T fresh sage

1 tsp fresh oregano

4 spearmint leaves and 2 peppermint leaves (or 1 tsp combined fresh mint)

Chop the garlic and set it aside to rest.

Combine the olive oil, vinegar and lime juice in a large measuring cup. Add the turmeric, pepper, and salt. Set aside.

Chop the herbs; set aside.

Remove all fat from the chicken and cut it into chunks or strips no more than 1" in size. Put the chicken in a bowl or plastic bag.

Beat the oil, vinegar and lime juice briskly with a fork for 1 minute. It will separate immediately, but at least you tried. Add the garlic; stir. Add the herbs and stir thoroughly.

Pour this marinade over the chicken and stir well. Marinate in the refrigerator for 24 hours or more, stirring occasionally in a vain effort to get the oil and vinegar back together.

The olive oil may solidify in the fridge. For this reason, I prefer to use a plastic bag. Frequent vigorous (but not too vigorous) squishing of the plastic bag can reliquefy the oil.

Once the spiedies are marinated, remove them from the liquid. Fry them. (The oil will tend to splatter, so you might want to cover the pan. Alternatively, they can be skewered and cooked outdoors on a grill.) Drain on paper towels or paper bags, and serve in your preferred sandwich wrapper. I like to use toasted Italian bread. Traditionally nothing joins the spiedies inside the sandwich. It's just spiedies and bread. 
 

Alternative for those avoiding starches: Cut each chicken breast into three or four thin cutlets, instead of chunks or strips. Marinate. Then, instead of frying, spread the marinated spiedies on a cookie sheet and bake in a 350 degree oven for 20-25 minutes, or until cooked through. (Slice and make sure there's no pink inside.)

The fresh herbs, by the way, are why I prefer to make spiedies in the summer. But don't go out and buy all that stuff if you haven't got it growing. And if you have thyme, which grows wild in much of upstate New York, use that too. Just use whatever you have, in whatever combination you want. Spiedies are essentially a state of mind.

1 If using dried herbs, use 1/3 as much. 1 T fresh= 1 tsp dried. 1 tsp fresh= 1/3 tsp dried.

My Writing Process Blog Tour

I would like to thank the delightful and wise Megan Frazer Blakemore, author of The Spy Catchers of Maple Hill, for inviting me to participate in the Writing Process Blog Tour. I have the honor to know Megan through Twitter and lists; lots of lists! Her 2013 middle grade fantasy The Water Castle tends to appear on the same lists as my book Jinx. Most recently, they both appeared on the 2014-15 New Mexico Land of Enchantment list.


And now, here are my answers to the Writing Process Blog Tour questions:

1) What are you working on?

I'm sitting here waiting for the page proofs of the third and (for the nonce) final Jinx book, Jinx's Fire. They should be here very soon. And I've started drafting another middle grade fantasy. This one is set in a different world from Jinx's, and at the moment the protagonist is a girl. I'm about 12,000 words in.

2) How does your work differ from others of its genre?

I suppose anybody's work is different from anyone else's. You could take any story idea (for example: Due to a series of errors, a fieldmouse is elected President of the United States) and hand it to 100 different writers, and you'd get 100 different stories.

One characteristic of all my work is that I'm fascinated by setting. I love to explore places. Setting is nearly always a character in my stories. In the Jinx books, the setting even has a speaking part.


3) Why do you write what you do?

The desire to explore, again. Not just places, but relationships between people, and the reasons why things happen, and the unwritten rules and assumptions that we live by.

I feel lucky to be writing children's fantasy, because fantasy stays with you. When people talk about the books they remember from childhood, more often than not they talk about fantasy. There's much more children's fantasy being published now than when I was a kid, and I'm so glad to be allowed to be part of that.

4) How does your writing process work?

I spend a long time-- months, sometimes years-- letting the story come to me. While that's happening, I walk, I draw pictures, I write down bits of dialogue and ideas, and I do bubble maps. I use colored sharpies for the latter; a different color for each character or event. (I have a lot of colors.) I also use the colored sharpies on index cards, which I'll rearrange on a table or on the wall until I get the main events into a temporary order.

Then I start drafting, as fast as possible. I shoot for 10,000 words a week and usually make it.

I set the draft aside for as long as I can afford to (usually two weeks to two months). Then I come back to it with fresh eyes and begin the revision process. I usually go back and make more bubble charts at this point to resolve issues that have come up during the drafting. It'll be sometime after the third draft that I actually show the work to friends, family, or critique partners.

After that there will be several more revisions before I'm ready to send the work off, and then finally of course there are yet more revisions with the guidance of my agent or an editor.

Oops, here's the UPS guy with those page proofs for Jinx's Fire! So I'm going to finish now and hand you over to another participant in the Writing Process Blog Tour, fantasy author Sarah Prineas, who needs no introduction but is going to get one anyway.

Sarah Prineas's award-winning Magic Thief series follows the adventures of the irascible wizard Nevery and his gutterboy apprentice, Connwaer. Sarah holds a PhD in English literature and recently taught honors seminars on fantasy and science fiction literature at the University of Iowa. Her latest book is Moonkind, the conclusion to the Winterling series. Visit her website here, and watch for her Writing Process Blog Tour post on June 12^th.